Tag Archives: Parliament

Government backbenchers attacked MP Brent Rathgeber, who quit the caucus last week after saying the Conservatives have â€œmorphed into what we have once mocked.â€

Within 24 hours of Mr. Rathgeberâ€™s (Edmonton-St. Albert, Alta.) exit from the Conservative caucus, members of the governmentâ€™s backbenches began to take aim at the now Independent MP by disputing his comments and questioning his professionalism.

â€œHe canâ€™t get along with people in the sandbox,â€ said Tory MP Greg Rickford (Kenora, Ont.), Parliamentary Secretary for Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. â€œBrent spoke for himself. Heâ€™s always been that way. As a provincial legislator he couldnâ€™t get along with people.â€

Mr. Rickford told The Hill Times that he â€œdidnâ€™t appreciateâ€ statements made by Mr. Rathgeber following the announcement of his resignation late last Wednesday evening.

Mr. Rathgeber announced his resignation from the Conservative caucus on June 5 on Twitter, hours after the Conservative-dominated House Access to Information, Privacy, and Ethics Committee amended his private memberâ€™s bill, Bill C-461, which would have required the annual salaries of public servants in excess of $188,000 to be made public. Conservative members of the committee raised the disclosure threshold to $444,000.

This amendment, dubbed by Mr. Rathgeber as â€œthe proverbial straw that broke the camelâ€™s back,â€ led the Alberta MP to announce his resignation from Conservative caucus late Wednesday night.

The morning after announcing his resignation from the Tory caucus, Mr. Rathgeber wrote on his blog that the â€œGovernmentâ€™s lack of support for my transparency bill is tantamount to a lack of support for transparency and open government generally.â€

On his blog, Mr. Rathgeber wrote that the $188,000 salary was a compromise itself, and noted that various provinces have â€œsunshine lawsâ€ that disclose the names and departments of individuals that make upwards of $100,000.

â€œEven setting the benchmark significantly higher than any of the provinces that maintain â€˜Sunshine Listsâ€™ was apparently not supportable by a Cabinet intent on not disclosing how much it pays its senior advisors,â€ wrote Mr. Rathgeber.

He also identified the controversy surrounding Prime Minister Stephen Harperâ€™s (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) former chief of staff Nigel Wright, and the $90,000 cheque Mr. Wright gave to Senator Mike Duffy to cover ineligible expense claims as a contributing factor to his decision to leave the Conservative caucus.

â€œWe have morphed into what we have once mocked,â€ he wrote.

Mr. Rathgeber ended the scathing blog post by writing, â€œI no longer recognize much of the party that I joined and whose principles (at least on paper), I still believe in. Accordingly, since I can no longer stand with them, I must now stand alone.â€

In a press conference following his arrival in Edmonton on June 6, Mr. Rathgeber blasted PMO staffers for controlling MPs as though they were â€œtrained seals,â€ although he said he supported Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.).

First of all Rathgeber is totally right. Â Backbench MPs are trained seals which means that many talented people will not choose to run for office because they don’t want to have every speech vetted by the PMO and have no input in on government decisions ever. Â

Then you get a cycle were because talented people aren’t interested in becoming MPs so you are left with many MPs from both parties who are minor league quality which of course requires more PMO oversight which then discourages competent people to run. Â Eventually you get to a situation where trained seals could do the job of many MPs as long as they can sign off on the ten percenters.

The reason why people got upset with Rathgeber is because it hit close to home. Â That and the PMO told them to be upset. Â Then it gave them a fish as a reward.

The Centre Block of Canadaâ€™s three-part Parliament Buildings â€” which houses the Senate, the House of Commons and prime minister Stephen Harperâ€™s office â€” is â€œseriously deterioratingâ€ and will â€œreach the end of its life cycleâ€ in seven years, according to the man in charge of renovations on Parliament Hill.

Itâ€™s a nail biter because work on a temporary home for the House of Commons in the West Block isnâ€™t expected to be finished until 2017 and, in the meantime, tape, wood and netting are holding together parts of the iconic structure.

This past February, water leakage in Centre Block caused one of two transformers providing power to the Hill to explode â€œbecause it came to the end of its useful life,â€ Assistant Deputy Minister Pierre-Marc Mongeau told the Government Operations Committee Thursday.

The neo-gothic stone building â€” the only one in the world to be so well conserved â€” was re-built in 1922 after a fire destroyed the original building.

But, despite the ongoing efforts of maintenance staff to â€œdo all they can,â€ Mongeau told the committee that the buildingâ€™s aging structural, mechanical and technical systems are at â€œa critical risk of total failure by 2019.â€

Mongeau said if the systems fail, the building could become unsafe for use requiring it â€œto be shut down.â€

In 1994 and 1995, the faÃ§ade of the building was repaired, but Mongeau said the other three less-visible sides were not.

Ventilation towers are â€œtaped,â€ with wood pieces around them and pieces of stained glass windows in the House of Commons are beginning to fall out, he said.

â€œThat means that we need to put in a net protection around those windows and visually that doesnâ€™t look so good,â€ he said.

â€œClearly itâ€™s not likely to get better until itâ€™s fixed,â€ said Liberal MP John McCallum, â€œbut, I think (Mongeau) felt that it was manageable.â€

â€œIâ€™ve been there for 12 years and Iâ€™ve never had the feeling that itâ€™s falling apart,â€ he said. â€œThere are things that need repair, and itâ€™s unfortunate that itâ€™s going to take so many years before itâ€™s done, but Iâ€™ve never been sitting in Parliament or walking around Centre Block thinking that Iâ€™m in a crumbling building.â€

However, he said the building is the â€œcentral block of our democracyâ€ and heâ€™d â€œrather wait a few more years… and have a building of which we can be proud than do it faster and make mistakes.â€

Conservative MP Mike Wallace wasnâ€™t surprised to hear about the problems due to the sheer age of the buildings, although he said he hadnâ€™t noticed any obvious signs of the deterioration.

â€œIt is a fair age and, if you look around your own home, the older it gets, the more work it needs,â€ he said.

Mongeau was not available for comment Friday.

The House of Commons is expected to be re-housed in the modernized â€œenergy efficientâ€ West Block â€” complete with a three-layer glass ceiling, which will trap heat and supply 10 per cent of the buildingâ€™s energy needs on sunny days, â€œeven in winterâ€ â€” before its end-of-life date in 2019.

The Senate will be moved to the East Block.

Painstaking rehabilitation work began on the West Block in earnest in 2007 after workers finished completely overhauling both the exterior and the interior of the 130-year-old Library of Parliament Building in the spring of 2006.

For those of us who call Saskatoon home and watched the almost painfully slow rehabilitation of the Peter McKinnon Building knows how long it takes to bring back a building to life. Â Renovations change the way a building works, materials interact differently then expected, and then you have to decide what it is going to have to in the future and make it work in the context of the original architectural vision. Â It’s harder than it looks.

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This is a weblog about urban issues, technology, & culture published by Jordon Cooper since 2001. You can read about me and the site here and if you are looking for one of my columns in The StarPhoenix, you can find them here.